


Hot-Blooded Californian Girl

by MayorMimi



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Awkwardness, Bonding, Bullying, But he still tries to be sweet to the sorta new girl/sorta party member, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, I wanna write more, Idk how to write bullies, Light-Hearted, Mild Language, Protectiveness, Teasing, Will is sleepy and a bit grouchy, i wish this was longer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 02:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19123060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayorMimi/pseuds/MayorMimi
Summary: Will thought he’d be walking home alone today. Apparently, there’d be a change of plans.Rated T for swears and mentions of smoking/sexual assault.





	Hot-Blooded Californian Girl

There was a bang as Will’s shoulder blades collided with his locker. To be picked on was always a pain, but he never braced himself for being cornered so early in the morning after getting next to no sleep the previous night. Maybe pulling an all-nighter wasn’t a wise idea coming from somebody nicknamed _Will the Wise_. The bully had gripped a fistful of Will’s shirt and pressed it against the smaller boy’s chest to pin him against the locker. Will’s vision was too bleary with exhaustion, and murky with pain from his back’s earlier encounter with the metal surface to see his assailant’s face.

He looked up at the larger boy through half-lidded eyes, contemplating whether or not he should ask what the browbeater wanted from him before first period; Will hadn’t even heard anybody sneak up behind him. “Didn’t your mom teach you not to ignore people, zombie-boy?” The bulldozer seethed, his breath reeking of cigarettes. “Or did you have a change of heart today and decide to be a little prick? Huh?”

Truth be told, Will wasn’t even aware he ignored anybody. “Oh, were you talking to me…?”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“Sorry, guess I didn’t hear you.” Will’s face twitched as he resisted the urge to close his eyes and block out the stench of tobacco before it made him gag. 

The bear scoffed at the fawn. “Really? After all that yelling? I call bullsh—” He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around, only for his face to be met by a fist. The sound of the strike was nearly louder than the bang produced when Will’s shoulder hit the wall, indicating which of the two individuals before him was stronger. The large boy was sent to the ground, giving away the smaller figure of Max Mayfield behind him, while Will’s breath of relief welcomed her interruption. She shot the body on the ground a scoff and a dirty glare before approaching Will with a look nearly as irate.

“You,” she began, “should‘ve stood up for yourself.” Without sparing him a second glance or waiting for a reply, she turned and vanished. Will watched her strut away with her fiery hair flapping at her shoulders—his mouth half-open as if to ask a question, before he clenched it shut and swallowed in resignation.

The rest of Will’s school day could be described as a string of attempts at staying awake. Keeping his eyes open proved to be easier said than done when the day felt endless since Lucas, Dustin, and Mike had caught the same cold and were likely down-and-out for the rest of the week. This left Will alone at school, save for Max. Max wasn’t even a party member—according to Mike—and the paladin didn’t seem to like it when the cleric spoke to the self-proclaimed “ _zoomer_ ”, so Will said nothing at all. It’d be simple to just do what Mike wanted him to and avoid her, Will considered; he’d just take the shortcut home and have a nap...or so he would like to believe.

“Waiting for someone?” Asked Will, still sifting through his locker for his science textbook. He kept all his storage space more or less organized, but it was hard to see when the thought of him dropping to the ground and napping on the spot seemed almost alluring.

Max flinched, wondering how he saw her lean on the lockers parallel to his. The squirrelly kid must’ve been a psychic; despite how petite he looked in Jonathon’s hand-me-down jacket, there was something surprisingly unnerving about how keen he was today. “Why do you ask?”

“Your locker—”He finally turned to face her with a book under arm—“is way over there.” Will indicated its distant position with a nod of his head, and kept it cocked to suggest curiosity. Max said nothing, so he straightened his neck and went on, “Also, you’ve been standing there for awhile.” He might’ve shied away from voiced observations on a regular basis, but it seemed that lack of sleep did something to one’s confidence.

“Yikes,” thought Max; “it seems the weird kid isn’t so squirrelly today. Must’ve woken up at the wrong side of the bed.” He wasn’t in an ill humor, though; it was difficult to ‘wake up on the wrong side of the bed’ when one hasn’t been in bed at all. She turned her head and scoffed at the way his remarks hit so close to home, but kept her arms folded across her as she re-addressed him. “Well, I’ve been thinking. Since you’re alone, considering Mike’s not here today—”

“And Lucas isn’t here for you, either,” observed Will—a little unsettled by how she focused on Mike. Why just Mike?

“...Yeah, well, none of _your_ party members are here—” She didn’t want this to be about her. “So I thought I’d keep you company while you walk home.”

Will considered her before looking down. “Um,” he faltered, “thanks, but no, thanks.” It occurred to him that might’ve come across as a rejection of sorts, so he pressed on, “I mean—I’d hate to be a bother.”

 Max suddenly pushed herself away from the lockers and held a hand to his upper arm. “Not at all!” She quickly let go, hoping her embarrassment wasn’t perceptible, and insisting, “I promise, you’re no bother.” It was true, she had already asked Billy at the breakfast table not to pick her up right in front her mother and stepdad, so it might’ve come across as suspicious if she was seen walking home alone, anyway. Her parents didn’t intervene with the request, and Max isn’t sure if the opportunity would present itself again.

 “Oh...Okay, then.” He mirrored her nod, inwardly praying that she won’t expect a conversation on the way home.

His prayers hadn’t been answered. The two walked the road as one chattered while staring at the sky, and the other listened while staring at the ground. Max was usually quiet and kept to herself around boys who weren’t Lucas, but Will wasn’t like the other boys—and she wasn’t talking about the Lovecraftian incidents surrounding him. Unlike those obnoxious yahoos, Will was quiet, thoughtful, and, furthermore, he listened. 

On the contrary, maybe the latter wasn’t so accurate at that moment. No matter how hard he tried to focus, then, his mind wandered. Not to other topics, but it seemed to almost black out altogether sometimes. Will rubbed his eyes, then lifted his head to look at her and hummed attentively.

“Huh?” Max didn’t expect a sound out of him so soon. 

“Oh, sorry.” He shook his head. “I just didn’t catch that last part.” It was a gross oversimplification, but Will couldn’t admit he had been treating her words like elevator music the whole time.

“...Well, I said I wanted to see the new menu at _Café de Curiosité_. But, I’ll probably have to wait for the weekend to roll by; I promised mom I’d be back as soon as possible.”

 “ _Café de_ what, now?”

 “ _Curiosité,_ you know, the one that opened a few months ago? Though I’ve known it for longer than that; there was a branch in California, so I guess I like it since it’s one of the few things I recognize here. Otherwise, I’m still ‘amid the alien corn’.” She looked at Will, who wasn’t sure if she intended the latter to be a joke or a complaint. “You’ve been there, of course.”

“Yeah. But I didn’t really order anything, so I can’t remember it that well.”

“You—?” Max stopped in her tracks, and it took him a few steps to notice he’d have to do the same. “Why not?”

“I don’t know, I guess…” He shrugged a shoulder, a little bashful to admit. “Everything just seems a bit pricey to me.” Will was cut off by Max grabbing his hand. Before he knew it, she was dragging him in the opposite direction. “Wh—Max—“ 

“Change of plans. We’re having dessert.”

 

“Who heard of caramel popcorn milkshake?”

The teenagers sat at a table for two parallel to each other, both skimming their laminated menus under the pink twilight of rosy lamp shades. It was Will who posed the question, after hearing Max consider aloud between it and a newer item on the menu. “It’s what I usually order when I’m here,” she explained without truly elaborating, “but wasabi ice cream does sound  interesting…”

“It’s all so weird, is that why everything here is so expensive? Is this what city kids eat?” The sentence was punctuated by a dry chuckle. “Hawkins must look like Dogpatch in comparison.” Will looked up at her after his thread of solemn questions, expecting an answer, but was only met by the smirk of a girl trying to contain her laughter. “What?”

 “You’re pretty funny, sometimes, y’know?”

 “Huh?” 

“Forget it, just hurry up and order.” 

“Uh—” Will scanned the menu, held between fingers barely peeking out of large sleeves— “sure, but...is it really okay for you to pay for all this? I heard that’s only what guys do on dates.”

 “What?”

“At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do, right?”

 “Dude, I’m the one that invited you.” Max’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “Your town sure has some pointless customs.” She knitted her brows in bewilderment, making Will feel a bit stupid, before Max returned to the list of cakes. Embarrassed, Will concealed his face in the _carte du jour_ , and quietly continued reading.

 

A tall glass of milkshake topped with a hill of caramel popcorn settled itself at the table between the two. Will switched between forking his monkey puzzle bread and watching Max down her bizarre drink from a silly straw at intervals, which didn’t seem to be for the faint of heart. The two kicked nonchalantly under the table, accidentally hitting each other on occasion and murmuring awkward apologies, but otherwise, they might as well have been alone.

Finally, Max broke the silence with a question. “How come you never stand up for yourself?” 

“Stand up for myself?”

 “You’re practically the school’s favorite punching bag—”

“It’s an honor,” interjected Will, rubbing his eyes and in no mood to talk about himself. He glanced back up at her. “Sorry.”

“No, never mind that.” It was a bit refreshing to hear him talk back. “I’m just saying it’s a little weird you don’t employ _some_ form of self-defense.”

“Lucas and Dustin help.”

 “Lucas and Dustin?” Echoed Max, who couldn’t hold her shreds of laughter in, much less resist grinning. She knew the two better than she knew anyone else—especially Lucas, of course—but this was the first she heard of. “Are you sure?”

“Fine, mostly Mike.”

 “Now, we’re getting somewhere,” Max thought, then said aloud, “and what if Mike’s absent?”

“A straight-A student? And anyway, I’ve absent more often than he has.”

“No kidding…” She never took Will for a fan of dark humor. “But he was absent _today_.”

“So?”

“Why don’t you learn to fight back?” Which brought them back to the beginning of the discussion. Moments of silence ticked audibly by on the wall clock, and Will found he couldn’t look directly at Max.

 His gaze shifted to her drink as he finally said, “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

 “What trouble? They started it.” Will got what she was trying to say, but…

 He had to pause, stare still fixed on the milkshake, before he went on, “In elementary school, there was this self-defense book I found. Didn’t buy it, I just found it at Mike’s house, and he let me keep it, but only God knows who it belonged to first. Anyway, I started reading it a lot; I loved the way the people were drawn in the diagrams. I guess I absorb information faster visually because practically everything in it was etched into my mind before I knew it.”

 “And…?”

 “And I ended up using it when Cason Van Buren picked on me one day. The thing is, most of what I learnt was for serious situations. Like—Like if a woman was...Y’know…” 

“I get the idea, go on.”

 “Anyway, I took it too far, so Cason ended up in a much worse shape than I was probably going to be in.”

 “No way!” She couldn’t picture ‘Big Ol’ Van Buren’ getting crushed by a kid half his size. “And then what? Did that teach him a lesson?”

“...Nah. He just called his parents, who ended up calling my parents, so then my mom and I got in trouble.”

“Oh.”

 “I still remember the look on mom’s face when she realized what I’d done, and trying to argue with Cason’s parents only made it worse, so we just apologized and she never said anything to me after that. I didn’t really care about Cason, but just thinking of what I got mom into made me cry for the next few days.” Will chuckled dryly, recalling how quick he was to tears as a kid. “Dad said he was proud of me—it was the first and last time he said he was proud of me—and that just made it worse.”

“So now?”

“So now the Byers don’t have the best reputation, and we can’t exactly do much else but apologize. Trying to fight back is only a one-way ticket to the principal’s office, and the bullies just milked that fact. There’s nothing to be done.” 

“Well, shit.” Max pushed the milkshake across the table. “If it makes you feel better—”

 “Oh, I couldn’t…”

 “It’s fine, I have one every other week—” 

“No, seriously, I don’t like caramel popcorn.”

 Max laughed and stood up, reaching over to bend the silly straw and press it to his lips until he’d give it a try, and knocking a few popcorns over in the process. Will went a little cross-eyed trying to look at it, before giving in and sampling the half-drunk shake. His face initially contorted at the heavy flavor, but Max seemed so merry at introducing someone to her favorite drink it was difficult not to want to humor her. She sat back down with satisfaction, remarking, “Wow, you’re obedient. Not even Lucas would try the desserts here, he would’ve said they were too weird.”

 “Well, I guess that’s what’s so lovable about Lucas,” he laughed, for as much of a party-pooper he could be sometimes, where would their group be without the brain? The corners of Will’s mouth quirked; caramel actually had a pleasant flavor when he got used to it. “Say, is that why you brought me here? Because he wouldn’t come?”

“No—”

“Or was it because he _couldn’t_ come?”

 “We’re not here to talk about me.”

 “Talking about myself isn’t that fun, either, I want to hear more about you.”

 Max smiled, resting her cheek into the palm of her hand. “Maybe the munchkin can be pretty fun when he’s not a pushover,” she thought, but said nothing aloud. Will returned the silence, as both considered that perhaps no words needed to be exchanged for the two to enjoy each other’s company.

 Both returned to kicking nonchalantly, and whenever their feet bumped into each other, they’d simply chuckle and rest them there.

 

“Why’d you take me there, anyway?” Asked Will, trailing behind Max on the road home. Her long legs carried her faster, so perhaps also forgetting his bike at home wasn’t wise of him, either.

 Max stared back at Will. “Because you never tried—”

 “No, I mean, won’t you be in trouble for coming home this late?” The cloudy sky only made it look later.

 “Oh, that.” She glanced away. “Um, I guess I just...I was thinking...I don’t know…”

 “...Thinking what?”

 “Forget it, it doesn’t matter.” She walked a bit quicker.

 Will raised his voice to call after her, cupping his sleeve-paws around his mouth as if to form a megaphone, “Thinking _what_ , Max?” But he soon focused on catching up, and gave up asking.

 Will eventually reached her, and the two silently matched their pacing. “Y’know,” she murmured, “you never really asked me for help.”

 “Hm?”

 “I’m your friend, too, remember? Or did you forget that?” Max didn’t wait for an answer before going on, “What I’m saying is, you shouldn’t be afraid to let me know if any of those assholes bother you. I’m probably stronger than your party added up, anyway.” She laughed. “Excluding  El, of course.” Max didn’t expect Will to suddenly jerk to a stop before bending down, and she assumed he was tying his shoes until she looked.

 Will had picked a stick up and was prodding something on the ground. Max squatted next to it with the sunset glistening on her back, casting a cold shadow over the object, as if the black clouds didn’t conceal their surroundings well enough. Will lifted it close to her face, mumbling, “I didn’t expect to find one out here.” It was a fat, hairy caterpillar sitting on a stick, inches from her nose. Max jumped back. “What’s wrong?” Will’s smile dropped a bit.

 “Nothing,” lied Max, “that’s really...cute.”

 Will looked at the bug, then lifted the stick a little closer to her, causing her to hop a few steps backwards. There was nothing angelic in his grin after that. “Are you afraid of bugs?”

 “What? Nah.”

 “Oh…” He lifted his chin. “So you wouldn’t mind if I handed it to you, right?”

“No!” She cried. “I mean yeah, I _do_ mind! I mean…” Max noticed him lower his face to conceal a chuckle and huffed. “You can be such a little demon, sometimes, you know that?”

Will rubbed his eye as he looked up, and noticed her strut off at twice their initial speed. “No, wait—” He gently rested the stick on the ground, and ran to catch up. It didn’t seem like he’d reach her again the second time the way he did the first. “Max, I’m sorry!” It was difficult to sound convincing through relentless laughter. 

Max didn’t stop until she heard a low rumble overhead. As she looked up, a raindrop greeted her forehead, followed by another. “Shit.” It was easy to forget one’s umbrella when one’s so accustomed to having a car ride home, anyway. Max shielded her head under her arms, and before she knew it, a thin shower coated the town. She looked back at Will, who had formed a shelter with Jonathon’s old coat. They locked gazes, and he wordlessly lifted the coat a bit further—inviting her. She pantomimed an eye roll to be sure he wouldn’t miss it, before nearly turning him down when the sky began to pour. 

Jonathon must’ve been taller than she recalled, for the coat fit both of them, although they had to waddle like penguins to be sure one wouldn’t push the other out. Max had glared the other way and refused to look at her friend, though it gradually became more difficult to maintain a hard expression. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but standing so close to her face, Will could’ve sworn it turned a precise shade of pink he recognized from his coloring box.

“Well, what do you know?” He thought, “Maybe even hot-blooded Californian girls can be cute.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a friend when we realized it’s a shame Will and Max’s friendship wasn’t looked into as much as I hoped it’d be. Watching the first few episodes of the second season, I was sure the new character would interact more with the core of the season, but it looks like I guessed wrong. He’s my ultimate favorite, and she’s one of my favorite girls (one of my top three favorites within the kids’ party). Praying for season three to not let me down!  
> I wanna write more of their bond, so maybe I’ll do that next or write a Will&Eleven focused one. (All I’ve seen of the latter involves Mike butting in which is a bit annoying, so someone needs to make more content of the psychic babies)


End file.
